There’s an increasing consensus within the field of modern slavery and human trafficking research that making practice more ethically attuned to the needs and aspirations of people with lived experience requires a move towards trauma-informed approaches. But what does it mean for research to be trauma-informed? Are we all speaking the same language when we refer to a ‘trauma-informed approach’? And what might this look like in practice?
These were some of the questions that a recent workshop ‘Adopting a Trauma-Informed Approach to Research’ aimed to address. The event was organised by academics at the University of Liverpool and the University of Central Lancashire, with funding from the Methods NorthWest Collaborative Innovation Grants.
Bringing together researchers, practitioners and lived experience experts from fields such as modern slavery, social policy and social work, child’s rights, policing and criminology and asylum and migration studies, the workshop aimed to create a supportive thinking space to share lessons from practice and lived experience.
Building on leading research expertise in participatory methods, ethics and trauma, it sought to begin an honest conversation about what it means to be trauma-informed across different research fields, the shared challenges researchers are facing in implementing trauma-informed approaches and how we can build capacity and support for trauma-informed approaches within our academic institutions and related research settings.
Here are our three key takeaways from the event.
1. To realise the potential of participatory research, all six elements of a trauma-informed approach need equal attention.
Trauma-informed models offer cross-cutting principles for research and practice that are usually distilled into six distinct pillars: safety, trust, peer-support, collaboration, empowerment and responsiveness to intersectionality. These are widely recognised as valuable touchpoints for practice across a range of research fields and practitioner settings.
University ethics committees and their review frameworks aim to prevent harm by asking researchers to identify and mitigate risks and think about how they can build trustworthy relationships with participants in their research by creating safe spaces for engagement. Yet, many of the workshop’s speakers noted that models of research ethics which focus on risk and harm prevention can often trigger institutional barriers to engagement. Without balancing concerns over risk and harm alongside attention to the empowering dimensions of a trauma-informed approach, we risk falling into paternalistic practices that make choices for rather than with colleagues who have lived experience.
In contrast, a centring of choice, voice, collaboration, peer support and scope to address systemic injustices, alongside attention to safety and trustworthiness, can create spaces of agency.
"A centring of choice, voice, collaboration, peer support and scope to address systemic injustices, alongside attention to safety and trustworthiness, can create spaces of agency."
One simple example of this in practice was that researchers should be as transparent as possible about what is a compulsory part of project engagement and where there is a choice in participant information sheets and onboarding meetings with lived experience participants. So, you may have a clear deadline for data collection by interview with a participant, but you may have flexibility about where that interview can take place. Separate out these choices from non-negotiable points and be clear and upfront about them for research participants with lived experience to make informed choices.
2. One-size-fits-all solutions fall short: we need open and regular conversations about research policies and protocols with each new set of research partners and participants.
Trauma-informed principles need to be unpacked in conversations with affected communities, trusted partners and experienced colleagues to offer culturally competent, locally sensitive and relevant guidance for individual research projects.
Adhering to the same trauma-informed principles might legitimately lead to different and even opposing practices in different research contexts. For example, while the trauma-informed model’s emphasis on trust might lead one research project to mandate that data collected through interviews with lived experience experts is recorded for accuracy, in another setting where the prospect of a recorded interview could prove re-traumatising to participants (e.g. for those who have experienced some form of abuse that involved being audio or video recorded) the trauma-informed model’s emphasis on safety would suggest note-taking to be a better option.
3. We can be creative when developing safe, supportive spaces for research engagement.
Workshop organisers made some sensory preparations in setting up this event to create a welcoming environment for discussion of trauma-informed approaches. From playing soothing music and calming visuals, to preparation of table settings with beautiful wildflowers and calm boxes, to inviting participants to take part in an opening and closing meditation with a trained facilitator, this workshop modelled practices that could be used, where appropriate, to make spaces of research more welcoming.
Discussions at the event affirmed the sense that there is widespread agreement that trauma-informed approaches can enhance existing ethics frameworks and policies in research, but we need to be clear about what makes a trauma-informed approach distinctive from existing ethics or safeguarding frameworks. To realise the empowering potential of trauma-informed research for both researchers and people with lived experience, we need to create supportive spaces for continuous learning, where we can reflect collectively on evolving practice across fields and advocate our institutions and funders to create the conditions in which ethical research can happen.
Dr Wendy Asquith and Dr Bethany Jackson are currently conducting a Modern Slavery PEC-funded study on research ethics in the field of modern slavery and human trafficking. Read about the research below.
